Orkut Blog

More about the new orkut

2009-11-17T10:32:00.000-08:00

The new orkut was launched and it seems like people are really enjoying it! We're handing out more invitations so you can enjoy what's new in this version, but in the meantime we also created a video summing up the key changes:

If you can't access the new orkut yet, don't worry - there are still different ways to get an invitation. Good luck!

Posted by Rodrigo Paiva, orkut operations team

Introducing the new version of orkut: fun new features, faster browsing, the same great friends

2009-10-28T18:45:00.001-07:00

Today is a very special day for the orkut team (and hopefully for you as well). After months of hard work, we are thrilled to announce the launch of a brand spanking new version of orkut. We've been listening carefully to all of the feedback that you've so diligently left us and have rebuilt the site from the bottom up using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). Doing so has allowed us to create a faster, richer and more intuitive experience for you and continue to increase our pace of innovation. With the new version of orkut you'll find:

Fewer pages, faster browsing: We've concentrated orkut's principal actions onto your homepage, making it a one-stop-shop for nearly everything that you'd like to do. Now you can chat, watch videos, and browse and search within your full friends and communities lists without ever having to open a new page. See a photo, video, or status message in your activity stream that you'd like to comment on? Just start typing away. After all, fewer pages and a GWT interface mean less time waiting for things to load and more time doing what really matters– hanging out with your friends!

A clean, simple interface: We've reorganized the most important activites on orkut so that they are easy to find and even easier to use. Look out for larger pictures, easier to access notifications, targeted friend suggestions, and key updates closer to the top of your homepage. Now you can even use your friends' profile pages to keep up with their most recent activities and leave them scraps.

Greater personalization: Make your orkut profile and homepage truly your own by choosing the color that best fits your style. Have a personality that's too unique to be captured by words? We've also made it possible for you to customize your "about me" section, adding video, OpenSocial applications and much more to your array of options.

And much, much more: This is just a taste of all the new things you'll find on orkut. Learn more about all of the different features you'll find on the new interface by visiting this page on the orkut Help Center.

Excited about the new version of the site? Then you'll also be excited to know that we're returning to orkut's roots and granting access to it via invitations. Starting today, there are two ways to get invites:

Join Poppy and Shashi on the official community (www.orkut.co.in/neworkut) for insights into the new version of orkut and participate in one of the many activities that will be taking place there. Be sure to check back often as the owners will be regularly announcing new ways to get access.
Find a friend who's already using the new version of orkut and ask for an invite. You can see who's already gotten access via your activity stream or by this icon that will appear on your friends' profile pages, next to their names.

We'd like to think of this as the beginning of a new evolution for orkut, so please stay posted for even more improvements coming in the near future. If you'd like to leave us a comment just visit the orkut Help Forum.

Hope to see you on the new version of orkut soon!

Posted by the whole orkut team

Update your browser and stay safe

2009-10-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

The orkut team is constantly working to keep orkut a fun and safe place for everyone. We've previously posted some tips on staying secure on orkut — if you haven't seen them yet, take a look! — but I want to share one more security tip with you: this one is about browsers.

Your Internet browser is one of the most important software programs on your computer because every website you visit runs through it. Right now you're using a browser to read this blog post, just as you use it to access orkut or any other site on the Internet.

Orkut itself is fully supported by the latest versions of three major browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. For the best experience, you should always access orkut via one of these browsers.

Although most people on orkut do use one of those browsers, not everyone remembers to frequently update their browser versions. This means that many people may be using an older version of Firefox or Internet Explorer. Old browsers are not only slower and sometimes prone to crashing, but they're also unsafe because they lack the latest security features and bug fixes that are included in newer updates.

So, if you want to stay safe, remember to update your browser to the latest version. It's free, and it only takes a few minutes! The good news is that if you use Google Chrome, you're already up-to-date — Google Chrome automatically installs the newest version when it becomes available.

To try Google's web browser, click to download Google Chrome. You can also download the latest version of Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer 8 optimized for Google.

Browse safely, folks!

Posted by Ariel, orkut operations team

Keep your finger on the pulse of orkut with www.orkutheroes.com

2009-10-19T06:43:00.000-07:00

With it's tens of millions of active users and innumerable communities and Open Social applications, it can sometimes be tough to stay on top of everything that's happening on orkut. While we do our best to keep you posted via the official orkut blog, there are lots of other great resources out there dedicated to exactly that purpose. Today we'd like to highlight orkutheroes.com, a site focused on honoring those users who are helping to bring people together on orkut by creating interesting, creative communities and providing useful information to others. Founded and maintained by Zaheer Abbas (known as Zazo), and Tara, orkutheroes.com offers a tremendous amount of content, including interviews, tips and updates about what's new, reviews of blogs maintained by orkut users, and orkut related graphics and posters.

In just a few minutes of browsing the site I've found everything from an article on a Reiki Grand Master who uses her 15 orkut communities to attempt to heal and educate people about her craft to a peek into the lives of four people who use orkut to share memory exercises and math tricks.

If you're ever looking for a quick diversion, take a few moments to see what quirky, surprising and informative new tidbits the orkutheroes team has posted (like this interview of Sameep Kulkarni, a budding 'software sitarist').

Know of another great resource for people looking to learn more about orkut? Stop by the orkut Help Forum and let us know– you might see it appear on the official orkut blog!

Posted by Swati Rai, operations team

Break out the fireworks and sweets: Diwali 2009 has arrived!

2009-10-16T06:53:00.000-07:00

It's time to turn on the lights, paint the house with fresh colors, wear new clothes and gather with family and friends to share in the festive cheer. Diwali is one of the largest holidays in India and has a simple and very important meaning: celebrate the victory of good over evil, light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance.

The Diwali fever is upon us, and orkut certainly hasn't been left out of the fun. Communities are doing everything from pushing for a 'pollution free Diwali' to voting on their favorite websites for sending Diwali greetings. Check out the I love Diwali community's active polls on people's favorite things about the holiday (right now, 'crackers' is topping the list with 27% of votes, but it's closely followed by 'holidays', 'new clothes', and 'sweets').

A number of Open Social applications have also popped up to celebrate, like the Diwali Wish app. With it, you can create a wishlist of things you'd like this Diwali and see what your friends are hoping for as well. If you want to send special Diwali greeting cards or scraps, you can also try applications like Kaamana- Greetings for U and Fun Scraps.

If you haven't seen it already, take a look at the special Diwali logo we designed to brighten the festive season... Happy Diwali :-)

Posted by Shaon Roy Chowdhury, orkut operations team

UPDATE: Beginning with this year's Diwali celebration, the orkut team will be doing special doodles and posts to commemorate festive dates around the world. Keep your eyes peeled for the next one!

Calling all artists, designers, writers...

2009-09-24T12:14:00.000-07:00

What happens when one man uses his favorite social networking site to share his dreams, inspirations, and ideas? In the case of Pawandheer, it snowballs into a community of over 3000 members that hosts more than 40,000 photos and boasts hundreds of topics related to subjects as varied as yoga, blood donation, and great literary works.

Pawandheer, a 21 year-old media student in Andhra Pradesh, formed the community Orkut Photo Gallery MPG to share poetry, short stories, quotes and photographs with like-minded others. Through the active participation of its members, MPG has blossomed into a platform to discuss an incredibly diverse array of topics. Thanks to the hard work of its group of 30 odd moderators known as Team MPG, the community has turned into a true online resource. Take a look at this discussion on numerology and you'll find more than 700 posts focused solely on defining each of the numbers and the characteristics of people associated with them. Now you know where to go to read more about yourself or your partner!

Though most of MPG's members and moderators have never actually met in person, the goodwill and respect they have for one another allows the community to flourish. What’s next for this enthusiastic bunch? Regional meetings to plan the launch of a youth magazine later this year.

The orkut team is thrilled that orkut has helped to connect such an interesting and engaged group of people. If you'd like to check out the MPG community, you can visit it here: http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=51733930. Have a similar story that you'd like to share? Visit the orkut Help Forum and let us know. We'd love to feature you on the official orkut blog.

Posted by Ruchi Singh, Google Adwords team

Talk face-to-face with your friends with video chat in orkut

2009-09-15T09:53:00.000-07:00

Orkut is all about bringing real friends together no matter where they may be. Now that we've made it possible for all of you to chat with your friends inside orkut, we figured it was time to make the chat experience even richer. That's why we're so pleased to announce the launch of orkut video chat– a great new way for you and your friends to keep in touch face-to-face directly from your orkut homepage.

Have a webcam connected to your computer? Just take a few seconds to download a small plugin, install it, and you'll be all set to go.

Once you're signed in to orkut, you can tell which of your friends are also ready to video chat by the small green camera icons next to their names in your chat list.

When you find a friend you want to chat with, open a chat window and click on the "Start video chat" link in the "Actions" menu. If you want to get a better view of your friend, you can pop out your chat window and increase the size all the way up to full-screen.

Video chat makes it easy to keep in touch with everyone you know by letting you chat with friends signed in via Gmail and iGoogle, even if they're not orkut users. We hope this new feature helps you stay connected to the people you care about and makes orkut an even more fun place to hang out. If you've got feedback about video chat you'd like to share, we'd like to hear it– so just head to the orkut help forum and let us know!

Posted by Robin Schriebman and David Wu, software engineers

Finding friends made easy with orkut friend suggestions

2009-09-08T08:43:00.000-07:00

If you're as much of an orkut addict as I am, you probably spend a decent amount of time visiting friends' profiles and seeing what they're up to. While browsing, I'm often surprised to find people that I know (friends of friends), who I didn't even realize had orkut profiles. While I often use the search feature to find specific friends I want to add, up until now, there hasn't been an easy way to find those friends of mine I wouldn't think to search for.

We on the orkut team figured we could make things easier on everyone by offering suggestions of people you might want to be friends with on your orkut home page. With the new orkut friend suggestions feature, we use an algorithm to automatically create a list of people on orkut who you might know, and display it right below your birthday reminders.

Not only does the friend suggestions feature make it easy to find new friends, it also lets you add them to your friends list and send them a short message without ever leaving your home page. Just click the "add as friend" link below your friend's photo, customize the message you want to send (or use the predefined message we've created for you), and click "send invite."

We originally developed this feature to help people who were new to orkut to quickly and easily find all of their friends who had already joined, but soon realized that it could be just as useful to any orkut user, regardless of how many friends they have. As such, we've decided to make it available to all of you. We're currently in the process of rolling it out, so if you haven't seen it yet, don't worry, we'll be sure to get to you soon.

Have feedback about orkut friend suggestions? Visit the Help Forum and let us know.

Hope this new feature helps you make even more orkut friends!

Posted by Eduardo Tejada, software engineer

Everyone can chat now!

2009-08-18T12:46:00.000-07:00

We almost can't believe it ourselves, but we've finished enabling orkut chat for everyone!

Those of you who have been patiently waiting will be pleased to know that we've made orkut chat even more dynamic by adding these new features:

Chat pop out: allows you to view individual chats in separate windows

Group chat: lets you chat with multiple friends at the same time

Chat list: makes it easy to see which of your friends are online, whether they're logged in via orkut, Gmail, iGoogle, or Google Talk

Want to learn more? Check out this short instructional video:

Don't have access to chat from your orkut profile yet? Take a few seconds and verify your email address with us and you'll be all set.

By the way, we've still got a couple of cards up our sleeves. Do expect to see more exciting features coming to chat soon.

Posted by Rodrigo Almeida, software engineer

orkut 'promote': a free tool to help you spread the news to all your orkut friends

2009-08-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

Almost everyday there's something that I'd like to spread to all of my orkut friends, whether that be a hilarious YouTube video, a new orkut community I just discovered or a quote that happens to fit my mood. That's why I'm so happy to announce the release of a new orkut feature: 'promote'.

orkut promote is a free tool that allows you to create announcements and automatically send them to all of your orkut friends with a single click. Promote makes it easy to show text, your original photos from your orkut photo albums and your original YouTube videos to your orkut friends– just give your promotion a catchy title and a short description and you'll be all set to go.

With this new promote tool, you get:

the ability to easily create promotions using text, photos from your orkut albums, and your original YouTube videos
built-in 'spread' and 'trash' features that let you pass on the promotions you like to all of your friends and delete the ones you don't so that they never show up for you again
the 'my promotions' tool that shows you how many users have viewed, clicked on, or deleted your promotions, as well as how far they've spread
the ability to stop or delete a promotion that you've created at any time

We've done our best to make promotions not just easy to use, but also easy to find. That's why we've placed them in the upper right corner of your friends' home and profile pages, in the same place where advertisements typically appear.

Excited as we are? Check out this short instructional video to learn more:

If you haven't seen 'promote' yet, it's important to understand that we're currently in the process of rolling it out to all of our users around the world. If you're living in India, we're looking forward to having promote ready for you in the coming months. When it appears, head to the orkut Help Center and let us know what you think.

Hope you like the new feature and looking forward to seeing your promotions spreading through orkut soon!

Posted by the orkut promote team.

Happy 62nd, India!

2009-08-14T19:35:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, today marks the 62nd anniversary of Indian independence, and in honor of the special occasion, we've created a special commemorative doodle that shows up when you log in.

Check it out below:

Excited about the holiday? Share your thoughts at one of the many Independence Day related communities.

Here's to hoping everyone's day is safe, happy, and very independent. ;-)

Posted by Miles Johnson, Marketing Manager.

Face detection in orkut photo albums– photo tagging just got easier

2009-07-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

Photo albums are one of the most popular features on orkut and a personal favorite of mine. For me, tagging photos have been an especially good way of keeping a record of all the fun times that I've shared with friends. Yet as much as I love having my photo albums labeled, big albums (especially those with lots of group shots), can take a long time to tag.

To speed up the tagging process, we're launching a face detection feature on all new photos uploaded to orkut. With it, orkut is now able to automatically detect when faces appear in photos (by recognizing features like eyes, noses, mouths, etc.), but without actually identifying specific individuals. The algorithm is not perfect, however, so things like eyeglasses, difficult lighting, poses, etc. may 'fool' our system from time to time. If that ever happens, rest assured that you can always tag photos as you normally would, and of course change or remove any tags that you're unhappy with.

We've made the tagging process even easier by adding an auto-fill feature that suggests names from your friends list for the people that you tag. Just start typing in your friend's name, and auto-fill will take care of the rest.

Of course, all of the privacy features that you currently have with photos on orkut will remain in place and only your friends will be able to tag you in their photos. You'll also have the additional option of removing all tags if you would prefer not to be tagged in this manner or not to take advantage of orkut's face detection. We'll be rolling face detection out to everyone over the next few days, so if you're ready to see how it works, just try uploading a new photo to orkut.

Posted by Anand Pillai, Software Engineer.

UPDATE: We love to hear your feedback, so if you'd like to send us a quick note about face detection, just visit the orkut help forum.

Bring your orkut friendships with you as you travel the web with Google Friend Connect

2009-07-14T07:27:00.000-07:00

Today marks the international launch of Google Friend Connect, making the product available in 47 new languages, including Portuguese, Hindi, and Spanish. Friend Connect provides a way for website owners to easily add social features to their sites, creating a unified online social experience across diverse sites from around the web.

What's more, Friend Connect is integrated with orkut, allowing you to bring your orkut friendships with you to a host of participating sites. Login to Friend Connect using your orkut credentials, link in your orkut account, and you'll be saved the trouble of having to upload a new photo, create a new profile or re-establish all of the orkut friendships you've already made.

For those of you who have your own websites, Friend Connect makes it possible for anyone to join your site and discover other members. Instead of requiring complex and/or time intensive programming, Friend Connect also offers a catalog of social gadgets that you can add to your site by simply copying and pasting a few snippets of code. Visit the gadget gallery to find gadgets available in your language.

The orkut team was so pleased to hear about Friend Connect's international launch that we decided to add Friend Connect to the official orkut blogs. If you haven't noticed already, you can now follow the blog, and see which of your orkut friends are avid blog readers as well.

If you're a site owner and are interested in adding Friend Connect to your site, head to google.com/friendconnect. If you're a regular Friend Connect user, just login using your orkut account information and start taking your orkut network with you around the web!

Posted by Miles Johnson, Marketing Manager

Updates to OpenSocial apps on orkut

2009-06-16T12:13:00.000-07:00

By now, some of you have probably noticed that we've made some changes to OpenSocial apps on orkut. To make sure everyone knows what's going on, we thought we'd quickly run through what's new in this post.

OpenSocial apps categories: To make it easier to find the perfect Open Social application to fit your needs, we've organized the apps into categories. Now, whether you're interested in an app related to finance or just a simple game, you can quickly and easily find what you're looking for. You can now see the most popular and most recently added OpenSocial apps, as well as the apps your friends are using, broken down by category.

OpenSocial apps stats: A great way to find new OpenSocial apps to try is by looking at how many people use particular apps and how often. We've recently made this comparison much easier by adding stats on the number of users each app has, as well as its weekly usage directly to the 'application info' page.

New OpenSocial apps profile view: In order to help make the OpenSocial apps experience faster and more secure, we've changed how apps appear on your profile pages. All OpenSocial apps now display a combination of html and images and/or animated gifs on profile pages rather than the moving flash images some used to show. But don't worry, when you click on the app, you'll still have all the same functionality that you've always had. While this change might take some getting used to, we hope you'll appreciate how much faster and safer it makes orkut.

As always, we love to hear your feedback, so be sure to share your opinion in the orkut Help Group and let us know how we can make apps even more useful and fun.

Posted by Rahul Kulkarni, Product Manager

Advertising on orkut

2009-06-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about social networks is their ability to supply you with information that's relevant to you: whether that be updates from friends, an invite to a fun party, or photos of a new baby in the family. On the orkut team, we believe that advertisements should be no different. That's why we've done our best to match you with the ads that we think you'll be most interested in.

Ever wonder why you see ads related to cricket while your techie older sister tends to see more ads for laptop computers? One of the important ways that the orkut ads platform is able to match you with relevant ads is by looking broadly at the types of communities you've chosen to join. So if you're a member of tons of sports communities while your sister prefers to join ones related to gaming, the two of you will probably see some different ads. Of course, respecting your personal information is very important to us, which is why we've created a clear privacy policy letting you know exactly how it's used.

We also believe that even the most well-targeted ads have their time and place. This is why not all of you see ads on orkut and why those of you who do only see them in a fixed and limited space on each page where they appear.

Recently we decided to move the location of ads on your homepages to a more prominent position: the top right of the page. While we know this is a bit of a change from what you're used to, we've found this to be the best way to strike a balance between making ads more visible and maintaining our focus on providing you with a great user experience.

To help make our ads platform even easier to understand and provide a place for advertisers to get started creating campaigns, we've built an advertising microsite. Access it at: www.orkut.com/advertise or by clicking on the "advertise" link in the footer of your orkut page.

We hope you enjoy these new additions to orkut and that you take the time to check out our new advertising microsite. On it you'll find advertising options both for established advertisers and for people looking to create a campaign for the very first time. You know we love feedback, so if you have anything you'd like to share, just head to the orkut Help Forum.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Marketing Manager

Introducing the orkut mobile app

2009-06-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

When we first launched a version of orkut for mobile phones, we couldn't have predicted how popular it would become. Every day, many of you sign in to orkut on your phones from all over the world– checking out scraps, updates from friends, and even viewing photos. As mobile phones are becoming one of the major ways that you access orkut, we thought it was about time to introduce a mobile application that offered you the site's core functionality wherever you happen to be.

Today, we're thrilled to announce the beta launch of the orkut mobile application, a downloadable app for Java-enabled phones (including popular phones like the Nokia N95, Nokia 6300, and Sony Ericsson W580i), that truly makes your orkut experience as mobile as you are. Check out our top five favorite features of the orkut mobile app:

Upload photos to orkut on-the-go, directly from your phone.
View scraps, friends' updates, and photo albums while you're offline.
Share your orkut albums with all of your friends whether they use orkut or not (via SMS).
Easily call or SMS your orkut friends and address book contacts from within the app.
Get automatic updates when your friends change their contact information or orkut profiles.

Excited? Install the orkut mobile app (available in English and Portuguese), by heading to m.google.com/orkut on your mobile phone's browser. While the app is free to download and use, your mobile provider's regular data charges will apply.

We've done our best to make this app accessible to as many of you as possible, so as long as you have Java enabled phone and a data plan, you should be all set. For more detailed info on supported phones, check out our help center. Once you've had a chance to play with this new app, we'd love to hear your feedback, so head to the Help Forum and let us know what you think.

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Google Mobile Team

Our condolences

2009-06-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

The orkut team was deeply saddened to learn of the recent accident involving Air France Flight 447. We would like to offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of all of the victims.

As we know that many of you are also troubled by this tragedy, we'd like to point you to a user created community meant to help you show support for those affected (in Portuguese): Vôo AF 447 - Luto.

Posted by the orkut Team.

Staying secure on orkut

2009-05-04T11:35:00.000-07:00

Working on orkut security, I know that fraudulent sites sometimes try to take advantage of orkut users like you and me. To help make sure that everyone is able to have a fun and safe experience on the site, I thought I'd share a few quick tips that I've picked up during my time on the orkut team. A bunch of these might seem like no-brainers, but hopefully you'll learn something new here as well:

Create a tough password: While "yourname123" is always a tempting password to create, keep in mind that it's just as easy for a malicious user to figure out as it is for you to remember. Try creating a password that involves a combination of letters and numbers that no one could easily guess, even if they know basic details about who you are. The same goes for your security question (the question that pops up if you forget your password)– you should try your best to pick a question that only you can answer.

Keep your private details private: Never share your orkut username and password with friends or on a site not authenticated by Google. orkut does not allow any external sites to store orkut login information and will never request that you enter it anywhere outside of the orkut login page. To be on the safe side, always check that your address bar reads "https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?....." and nothing else when sharing your orkut user name and password.

Leave the coding to the engineers: Never copy and paste code into your address bar, no matter what it claims to be able to do. Typically these scripts actually send messages (in your name!) to your friends trying to trick them into giving up their personal information.

Downloads and orkut don't mix: Never download any file off of orkut, especially those that end in '.vb' or '.exe'. These files are often viruses that can infect your computer and start sending thousands of spam messages on your behalf. Sites offering special orkut themes or skins are particularly risky.

Think twice about external links: Links to sites outside of orkut that appear in scraps or posts have not been verified by the orkut team, and could lead you to harmful sites. We'd recommend only clicking on links that go to trusted sites or those that are from other orkut users you know well.

Anti-Virus software is always a good call: Even the most conscientious orkuteer can fall victim to a phishing attack, so it's important to always be alert and prepared. Regularly scanning your computer with updated anti-virus software is a great way to keep your computer secure. Haven't installed anti-virus software on your computer yet? Check out Google Pack.

For new orkut features, check out apps!: Sometimes an unofficial site may claim to offer special orkut features, but these sites are known for taking over orkut accounts and directly violate our Terms of Service. If you're looking for fun new orkut functionality, check out the thousands of applications that we have available. All of these apps have been built by talented developers according to standards that we believe will help to keep you safe online. If you haven't visited the app directory recently, take a look– you might be surprised at how much cool stuff you find.

If you have more tips for staying safe on orkut that you think could benefit others, head over to the orkut U2U group and share them!

Posted by O. Todd Yates, orkut Abuse and Security

More controls for community owners

2009-04-30T06:51:00.000-07:00

Like many of you, a number of us on the orkut team are proud owners of active communities on orkut. While we love to see the discussions and divergent opinions that often come up, there are definitely times when the passion of our community members becomes overwhelming. Members sometimes start flame wars – creating new topics or polls to get their point across on the community home page, topics list and polls list pages. This degrades the overall experience for the other community members and often leaves us searching for ways to keep things under control.

To help with this issue, I developed a feature that does exactly that. Community owners now have access to a new setting: "only owner and moderators can create forum topics," which they can turn on and off as they wish. If you want to give it a try, just go to the "edit profile" page of your community.

When passions run high, you can now make use of this feature within your community. You can also try creating a few new forum topics like "Rant Room" or "Suggest new forum topics," where community members can continue their discussions without affecting everyone else's experience.

Sometimes the moderators on our communities even create new polls or forum topics to gauge how things are going. We've found the question: "Which member do you find most disruptive to quality conversations in the community and should be kicked out?" to be a particularly effective way of making sure that things stay civil.

We hope this new feature makes it even easier to maintain active and engaged communities on orkut. Have feedback about this feature or other advice for how to keep a community cool during heated discussions? Head to the orkut U2U group and give us a heads up.

Posted by Siddarth Naidu, Software Engineer

An orkut story

2009-04-24T13:08:00.000-07:00

We on the orkut team love using this blog to communicate with all of you guys about new features, special promotions, and the general goings-on here in our offices. We've found however, that some of the most interesting posts are actually the ones that come directly from you, and we've enjoyed hearing your personal orkut stories.

Recently we came across this story that we thought was so cool we just couldn't help but share. Read on to find out how Gisele, an early adopter of orkut (and wife of a Googler), found an unexpected use for the site many years after deciding that orkut wasn't for her.

Translated from Portuguese from Gisele's blog:

I remember quite well when I was first invited to join orkut. I found it strange, a huge e-mail in English, where only the sender looked familiar. Was it spam?

Many friends were chattering about having received that same e-mail, until someone finally explained to us what it was all about. So we signed up, posted pictures, joined communities, met people, it was a big thing.

However, the unanswered question in 2004 (that some people still have today) was: What is the purpose of orkut?

Without finding a convincing answer, I quit orkut in 2005 and didn't miss the site. However, last year, my husband (who quit orkut at the same time as I did) and I, decided to quietly return. We created a discreet profile that we only occasionally access, but that meets our needs. The site turned into a tool, used from time to time.

The last few days on orkut have been surprising. We accessed the site with our hearts in our throats, as we were looking for some special people. Special to me, without ever having seen them, met them, or heard from them.

They are my brothers-in-law, who my husband has been seeking unsuccessfully for eight years– and we finally found them through orkut!!!

I still question my presence on the site, but I am extremely grateful for it for making such an important encounter possible. And now the meeting will happen!!!

Gisele Gonçalves Bueno Quirino de Souza

Want to read more? See the original blog post here (in Portuguese). If you've got a personal orkut story that you'd like to share, just send us a quick note and let us know!

Posted by Rodrigo Paiva, Consumer Operations.

Just for laughs: what to do when someone ignores you on orkut?

2009-04-23T07:19:00.000-07:00

It could happen to anyone– you get to know someone, find them on orkut and ask them to add you as a friend. But instead of responding, they ignore you, and as the days creep on, you start to get a little upset. Or, even more extreme, you find out that a friend has deleted you from his friend list. What should you do in a situation like this?

Kicking and screaming may not be the best solution. Laughing at the situation is probably a better (and less exhausting) way to respond – especially since tomorrow you could be the 'friend deleter' rather than 'the deleted'. An even better option is just to pick up your guitar and sing this song (in Portuguese):

Original lyrics:

Você me ignorou no ORKUT
Isso é mau e repercute
Na minha auto estima
Já nem sei o que é que rima
Com a palavras scrap!
(...)
Você me ignorou no ORKUT
Eu só quero que me escute
Por que apagou meu depoimento…?
Um amor, um sentimento,
Foi levado pelo vento
Ouça essa canção que fiz para você
Se achar que tem a vê…
Te espero na lan house…
Eu tô sempre na lan house…
Quero tc com você…

English Translation:

You ignored my orkut post
This is bad and hurts the most
This self-esteem of mine
I don’t even know what rhymes
With the word scrap!
(…)
You ignored my orkut post
I need you to hear my woes
Why did you erase my line…?
A love, a feeling so fine
Taken by the wind, online
Please hear this song I made for you
If you think it has to do
I’ll wait for you at the Internet café
I’m always at the Internet café
I want to type with you…

This song was written by the Brazilian writer and columnist (and of course, orkut user), Luiz Marcondes. Have you made something creative related to orkut? Send us a note and let us know, we might be able to feature it on the orkut blog!

Posted by Miles Johnson, Marketing Manager.

Find your online friends with the new orkut chat roster

2009-04-22T08:48:00.000-07:00

If you're anything like me, the recent launch of the built-in chat feature within orkut has made hanging out with friends online much easier and a whole lot more fun. Yet, while it's always great to come across a little green 'available' bubble next to the name of a good friend, finding friends who are available to chat on orkut hasn't been as straightforward as it could have been.

To make it easier to connect with all of your friends who are online, we've decided to launch an orkut chat roster. This new roster shows you all of your contacts who are signed into Google Talk, whether through orkut, Gmail, iGoogle or the Google Talk application. If you want to chat with any of them, all you have to do is click on their names directly within the roster.

No matter where you go on orkut, the chat roster sits neatly on the left side of your orkut page. Want to customize the size and organization of your chat roster? Play with its look and feel by clicking on the 'options' tab. Of course, if you ever get tired of seeing who's signed into chat, you can also minimize the roster (or sign out of chat entirely), with a single click.

We've just begun to roll this feature out to everyone who has chat enabled in orkut, so if you haven't seen a roster yet, please be patient- we'll do our best to get it out to everyone as soon as we can.

Posted by Rodrigo Almeida, Software Engineer.

Google Latitude on orkut- share your live location with friends

2009-04-14T16:38:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have heard about the recent launch of Google Latitude, a fun new way to share your live location with friends. For those of you who aren't familiar, Google Latitude is a feature of Google Maps for Mobile that lets you (if you choose to opt-in) share your whereabouts and receive updates about your friends' approximate locations.

While we've already launched an iGoogle gadget, we knew that our launch couldn't be complete without bringing this to orkut. That's why a group of us on the Google Mobile team have created a Google Latitude application.

With this app, you can share your location and see your friends' locations on a map inside of orkut. Notice that an old friend is back in your hometown? Just click on her photo and send a scrap or head to her profile page and see what she's up to.

If you use Google Latitude from your mobile phone, you can even send your friends updates on your location while you're out and about, making it easier to bump into the people you care about.

Of course, none of this would be very much fun at all if you didn't have control over what and when you share and who you share it with. We've taken Latitude's privacy features very seriously and invite you to learn more about them in either the Help Center or by watching this privacy video.

Excited? Add the app and let your friends know where you are!

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Google Mobile Team

Bringing real people back into the conversation

2009-04-13T05:41:00.000-07:00

One of the coolest things about orkut is how it allows us all to form communities around the things that we care about. Personally, I love jumping into discussion forums and talking about my favorite topics with other people who share my enthusiasm.

More and more, however, we've noticed that the anonymous posts feature has been making it hard to have the kind of fun and meaningful conversations that everyone looks forward to in orkut communities. Instead of quality posts, we've been seeing a lot of spammy and abusive comments from anonymous users.

In order to make communities a more fun place to hang out, we've decided to remove the "post anonymously" option for all communities. While no new anonymous posts will be accepted on any community forum, any previously posted anonymous comments will be allowed to remain live for the time being.

We hope that this new change brings more balanced and useful conversations to the orkut discussion forums. If you have feedback for us about the decision, please feel to reach out through the orkut U2U group- we'd love to hear it.

Happy posting!

Posted by Rahul Kulkarni, Product Manager

orkut catches the election fever

2009-04-08T02:58:00.000-07:00

It's election time in India, and the orkut team wants to make sure that your voice is heard this year. That's why we've launched an ‘official’ community: “The Voice of Youth (www.orkut.co.in/loksabha2009).” By visiting the Voice of Youth community you can express your opinion and find out how other people from all over the country feel about the upcoming elections, the issues and India's leaders.

Outfitted with a special theme, the Voice of Youth community lets you participate in a poll that features a series of fun and thought-provoking questions about everything from voting and politicians to locally relevant issues. What's more, as soon as you answer a question, you'll be able to see the poll results in real time. We didn't want to leave anyone out of this experience, so even non-orkut users are free to visit the community.

Ready to participate? Just head to http://www.orkut.co.in/loksabha2009 and start answering the poll questions. Here are a few of our personal favorites:

1. What's the most important issue facing the country?
2. Can a celebrity influence your vote?
3. Who is the most good-looking politician?

As people vote in the poll, we'll be highlighting some of the most interesting results on the community's homepage. If you think we've missed a poll question on a topic you care about, feel free to suggest it right within the community.

Finally, what would an orkut election themed community be without a space for local flavor? To help make the Voice of the Youth community relevant to your local concerns, we've created chat rooms dedicated to each of the states in India.

We hope you take advantage of this new opportunity to be heard in this year's election. Don't delay though, as voting on all the polls will close on April 14th!

Posted by Shaon Roy Chowdhury, Consumer Operations Associate and Vihari Komaragiri, Product Manager